


Closing Walls and Ticking Clocks

by cliffhanging



Category: Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Ableism, Drabble, Freeform, Gen, L Lives AU, L Wins AU, Light Lives AU, Mental Illness, No closure, One Shot, Plot Bunny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 06:58:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13118478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cliffhanging/pseuds/cliffhanging
Summary: L wins, and Light bitterly contemplates his past, present and future in a mental asylum.





	Closing Walls and Ticking Clocks

**Author's Note:**

> Vague one-shot freeform type of thing. It's actually a little bit inspired by a much longer Death Note fic that I am planning to start writing, hopefully very soon. I guess you could call this a bit of a promo heheh...

**\--**

So... this was it, then. This deep, oppressive silence. This really was the end of the road to fixing humanity, snuffed out before it had even truly begun to take on form. God had fallen. Fallen at the hands of that... _heathen_ , Ryuuzaki. L. The cursed name tasted like vile poison on the back of Light's tongue, and he hadn't even spoken it. He wanted to cough, choke it up, spit it out and stamp down on it, but he physically could not, and so it resided, persisted, turning more and more foul as it bubbled and boiled like a stew at the forefront of his brain. _L_. _L_. _L_. That complete bastard. Light would kill him. Somehow, some way, Light would fucking kill him with his bare hands; latch his fingers around L's throat and squeeze as hard as possible, _squeeze until L's lips were blue and eyes were bulging and_ -

  


These thoughts were derailing. These were the thoughts of one going insane. Light didn't... Light was not insane, he _wasn't_. How could he possibly be? He was calm, collected, and had a perfect grasp on reality, people, and how to manipulate these things to appease to his desires. He knew more than anyone how to tell between right and wrong, and then how to make each one bend to his will. Or so, he'd thought he had. Until that bastard _L_... Had ruined him. He'd completely ruined him, and ruined _everything_. L couldn't possibly be human. L was a demon. L had been fashioned by the universe specially to terrorize him and ruin his plans, he had to have been, otherwise how could he, Light, God of his New World, have fallen from such a great height?

  


He had fallen, and in no way had the fall been dignified. He had tumbled and rolled painfully down a hill of grime and dirt in the form of humiliation, landing at the bottom dirtied and completely disheveled, so disoriented that his brain was still dizzy from it all. And at the end of everything, he had been sprawled at L's feet, completely hogtied and at the detective's mercy.

  


It turned out that L had some. Mercy, that was, or so he had claimed... Though Light failed to see what was so merciful about being torn down from his pedestal and then stuffed into a cage to rot for the rest of his miserable life. Light wasn't crazy, he swore it, but his own mind was already pressing walls in around him, a cloud of hysterics creeping in at the edges of his conscious, and he just _couldn't believe_ this was what he had become. Though he supposed it was better than... execution. There was room to improve, to turn things around somehow, some way. There was always a way, and Light would always find that way, no matter how unlikely.

  


When Light had first received his sentence, he had been confused. And then he had wanted to scream. The effort that he had needed to instill into himself in order not to do so in the middle of the court room had been so great that he had begun to hyperventilate, and his eyes had gone into tunnel vision. His breathing had sounded so embarrassingly loud in the court room, and he had only barely been able to register himself slumping forward, his palms resting on the table before him firmly in order to keep himself upright, and then he had been escorted out. L had been watching, Light knew; with his stupid computers and surveillance cameras. The utter bastard, the _devil_. He still wanted to smash his fists down onto a solid surface and scream it; _L was the devil_.

  


Light hadn't seen L since he had been arrested, and on the one hand, good riddance, but on the other, Light had a piece of his mind to tell to the detective. Just who did he think he was to dictate Light's life? To have him sent to a place where _insane_ people were kept? Just how _stupid_ was L? Had he learned nothing at all from working with Light all of that time? Light wasn't _like_ them, any of them! _God_ didn't belong here, in such a mortal kind of hell.

  


The walls were too close together. They only closed in more every time that Light dared to glance at them. He sat in the small room in the mental asylum on the single bed provided with his legs crossed and his back pressed to the wall, hands pressed together in his lap, head bowed and eyes closed. _So, this was it then_. This was where he was to live the rest of his long, long life. The room was barren of furniture except for the bed and the end table, which were both bolted to the ground. There was one window that let in weak rays of sunlight, but it was barred and too high for Light to look through it. He was deprived of any possible communication with the outside world, as well as any free movement without being escorted by a staff member. He was dumped into a daily routine that had to be followed. He couldn't even go to the bathroom without asking for permission. This... was almost similar to the life he had lived as Kira; constantly under suspicion, prying eyes and accusations, but at the same time it was completely different. There was deliberately no excitement anymore, no motive, nothing to fight for. Light was a fallen god, and no longer looked at as a god, but instead as some crazy mass murderer. It wasn't _right_.

  


The sound of the door to his room unlocking, an electrical humming sound that grated on the ears, pulled Light from his stupor, but he did not physically react in any way. Though he felt immense relief wash over him knowing he was going to be taken out of this damned tiny, shrinking room, though all of his focus zeroed desperately on the feeling of cooler air rushing in from the threshold as the door was opened, Light didn't so much as twitch. It was only when he was ordered to stand that Light raised his head and opened his eyes, settling his gaze with a deliberate, calculated serenity on the staff member before him. He wanted and hoped to will anyone who looked at him with his eyes that he was _not crazy, he didn't belong here, they must understand, let him_ _out_... Light obeyed the order after only a moment's hesitation, swaying gracefully to his feet and letting himself be followed out the door and down to the food court. It was part of the routine. He was expected to eat now, and so he had to. Failing to follow the rules would lead to restrictions on the already strict routine, and Light wanted to avoid that at all costs.

  


Light was among the inmates who were considered to be high functioning. He, once let out of his room, was allowed to wander and generally do as he pleased. Well, as long as it wasn't breaking any rules and as long as he didn't leave the premises indicated and as long as he was under near-constant supervision, he thought bitterly to himself. Once he had had all of the power in the world. Now, quicker than lightning, he was under the power of everyone else around him. With startling speed, his youthful beauty and exuberance had felt like it had been leeched out of him. His hair, once glossy and perfectly combed; his eyes, once liquid pools of russet determination; his skin, once unbearably soft and sun-kissed and unblemished... it had all slipped from his control or care ever since his arrest. Now his hair looked rather dry and wouldn't part correctly; his eyes, though still full of intelligence, had grown dull with defeat, dark circles smearing beneath them; his skin had lost much of its healthy colour. He looked, in a word, worn. The asylum uniforms didn't do him any favours, either. As a boy who had prided himself on his appearance much of his life, this change had more impact on him than it had any right to. It was frustrating, but unfortunately something that had had to be disregarded, as he was helpless to fix it.

  


Obediently, Light parted ways with his escort and took the only meal offered from where it was served, his skin prickling with the stares that he felt on him but was unsure if he was only imagining, and brought it to the most empty area of the room, far removed from every other human present, setting it on the table and then sitting as primly as he was able. There were other inmates there, but Light never bothered to acknowledge them or even look at them, nor would he. They had no clue who he had been. He didn't want to associate himself. _He didn't belong with them_ , and he never would, no matter how much everyone was deluded into believing that he did.

  


The food was unappetizing, but he intended to eat whatever he could stomach, and then leave as soon as possible, eyes fixed determinedly downwards as he remained deep in his own head, his thoughts like claws sinking into his awareness and tugging incessantly. 

  


Yes, _he_ was wrong. L was so _wrong_ , but the man would never admit it to himself, Light was sure. Getting understanding from him, or from anyone, was out of the question at this stage. Light was on very tight lockdown, and would have to put himself into a completely new level of strategizing if he ever hoped to propel himself into the right direction again. The idea was daunting. Not only was he to start back from square one, but had also had to take an extra step backwards into negative space. 

  


So deeply concentrated was Light that the vision of a figure entering the room, escorted by a staff member, in the corner of his eye startled him, though again he physically refused to so much as twitch. He still had _perfect control_ over himself, why couldn't anyone see that? His eyes, at first intensely fixated on the food in front of him as if it were a difficult puzzle, shifted slightly to assess the figure through the frizzy curtain of his fringe. 

  


Then the sight that met him nearly caused him to jolt as if electrocuted. He pressed the palms of his hands so hard into the table top that it gave a groan, as his eyes followed the shock of black hair. The resemblance was so similar that it was uncanny, disturbing, frightening... A cold sweat began to cling his shirt to his back. He looked exactly like _L_. 

  


Then eyes met, and those eyes were not L's. Was he seeing things? The thought reminded him of Ryuk, and he nearly shuddered in disgust. No, that person definitely looked like L. But they were not L, not logically. Eyes met, then they broke from each other again, and Light was left to gracelessly tumble back into his own musings as the figure disappeared through another door. Dazed, he wondered vaguely whether he was already losing control of himself or if what he'd seen had even been real. 


End file.
